nd neatly pasted them into scrap-books, where they still rest,
a complete record of that now forgotten farce. The Tichborne trial
recalled to Mark Twain the claimant in the Lampton family, who from
time to time wrote him long letters, urging him to join in the effort
to establish his rights to the earldom of Durham. This American claimant
was a distant cousin, who had "somehow gotten hold of, or had fabricated
a full set of documents."

Colonel Henry Watterson, just quoted (also a Lampton connection), adds:

During the Tichborne trial Mark and I were in London, and one day he
said to me: "I have investigated this Durham business down at the
Herald's office. There is nothing to it. The Lamptons passed out
of the earldom of Durham a hundred years ago. There were never any
estates; the title lapsed; the present earldom is a new creation,
not in the same family at all. But I'll tell you what: if you'll
put up $500, I'll put up $500 more; we'll bring our chap over here
and set him in as claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fat boy
won't be a marker to him."

It was a characteristic Mark Twain project, one of the sort he never
earned out in reality, but loved to follow in fancy, and with the pen
sometimes. The "Rightful Earl of Durham" continued to send letters for
a long time after that (some of them still exist), but he did not
establish his claim. No one but Mark Twain ever really got anything out
of it. Like the Tennessee land, it furnished material by and by for
a book. Colonel Watterson goes on to say that Clemens was only joking
about having looked up the matter in the peerage; that he hadn't really
looked it up at all, and that the earldom lies still in the Lampton
family.

Another of Clemens's friends in London at this time was Prentice
Mulford, of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide
reputation for his optimistic and practical psychologies. Through them
he lifted himself out of the slough of despond, and he sought to extend
a helping hand to others. His "White Cross Library" had a wide reading
and a wide influence; perhaps has to this day. But in 1873 Mulford had
not found the tangibility of thought, the secret of strength; he was
only finding it, maybe, in his frank acknowledgment of shortcoming:

Now, Mark, I am down-very much down at present; you are up-where you
deserve to be. I can't ask this on the score of any past favors,
for there have b